Cuban physicians had become so alarmed by the deaths of their patients that the Cuban Ministry of Health issued an urgent order withdrawing 39 pharmaceutical products from drugstores throughout the island. Of the 39. it was revealed that 36 had been supplied by Soviet and Sovietbloc sources and the other three by Red China. Sefiorita Nery Rodriguez was blinded and paralyzed from the waist down after taking a dose of Russianmanufactured polio vaccine at school in Cuba three years ago. This child is now a refugee living in Key West. The disastrous state of public health in Cuba often is successfully hidden from American doctors who know no Spanish and do not take the time to consider preCastro medical conditions before traveling to the island. On January 30. 1968.